


that touch of mink

by poseidon



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Being the one left behind, Conspiracy, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 16:45:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7692046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poseidon/pseuds/poseidon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Renée does before she leaves is set up a high-powered communications array. You think it’s going to spike your electric bill, even with the solar panels she’s installed, but you roll up your sleeves and help her screw the dish in place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that touch of mink

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this [tumblr](http://stardust-rain.tumblr.com/post/146141836353/concorddawns-lately-ive-been-really-into-the) post
> 
> My headcanon for Mr. Koudelka is Idris Elba, but you're free to imagine him however you want.

The last thing Renée does before she leaves is set up a high-powered communications array. You think it’s going to spike your electric bill, even with the solar panels she’s installed, but you roll up your sleeves and help her screw the dish in place.

“This way, you won’t have to go through Goddard every time I send you something,” she says. “They say it takes a couple of weeks for us to send anything.”

“I’m a patient man,” you say, kissing her cheek. “Look at it this way – you can keep infinity texting me when I don’t reply.”

She laughs and rolls her eyes, pushing you away playfully. She looks back at the dish with a quiet expression. “I can’t believe that after all these years, I’m finally going to space.”

You wrap an arm around her shoulder and pull her close. “Come on, we can reminisce inside with ice cream.”

She smiles at you and you wonder what you did to deserve her. Sure, you’re a little upset she agreed to this long post without consulting you first, but you understand that this is her biggest dream (aside from being cast in a production of Hamilton) coming true – she’s going into space.

And you’re going to support her, no matter what.

* * *

She calls you the day before the big launch. You wish you could’ve gone with her to Canaveral but Elodie was sick and there was a deadline coming up. She tells you how excited she is, how nervous, how much she’s going to miss you, and about her new crew.

“Dr. Hilbert seems all right,” she says, through the speaker of your cellphone while you make yourself a late dinner. “His accent is thick but understandable and he’s mostly keeping to himself. Though he’s bringing a crazy amount of materials and equipment with him. There are so many plants – he’s not even a botanist.”

“Maybe he’s going to blow them up in nitrogen or something,” you shrug. Science was never your strong suit. You’re not even sure if that’s a thing.

”Something like that,” she hums. “And then there’s the communications officer, Eiffel. You know what he keeps calling me – ‘Mink-ow-ski’.”

You let out a snort and shake your head. “Oh god.”

“He’s a sweet kid, otherwise, but come on, seriously?” She lets out a sigh.

“Maybe he just wants that touch of mink,” you joke and you swear you can hear her eyes roll into the back of her head.

“That joke got old the first time you used it,” she says, laughter in her voice.

“It’s still funny,” you insist. “Speaking of movies, are you taking any with you?”

“They assure us that we’ll have enough work to do that we won’t have time for entertainment, so they’re sending back my Broadway soundtracks.”

“Well, hey, maybe the AI has some,” you suggest.

You talk for a little while longer until she lets out a yawn. “All right, I got to get to sleep. We launch early tomorrow.”

“Send me a message the moment you get there,” you say.

“I will,” she promises. She pauses a moment. “Happy early birthday.”

You smile. “Thanks, love." You check the clock and notice that it's well past 12 am. "Now get some rest, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too.” She hangs up and you sit down to eat, staring longingly at her empty seat. She’s not even gone yet and you already miss her.

* * *

The first message comes in about two weeks and then they come in regularly, first every day, then every other day, until there’s no real pattern to how often you’ll get something.  Sometimes weeks will go by before you hear from her, sometimes you’ll get two in one week. You get why the frequency is erratic – space is busy and dangerous, and the station requires her full attention.

Most of the messages are telegrams, almost like diary entries about her days. She starts out excited, happy to be there and happy to be with her officers in the Hephaestus station. She gushes about how funny Eiffel is (though he still gets her name wrong), how knowledgeable Hilbert is (though he’s always in his lab), and how helpful the AI Hera is (though she’s sometimes creepy).

You can’t pinpoint exactly when, maybe three to four months since she’s been gone, but you notice the change in her attitude – her lovable companions become annoying roommates, the glamorous station becomes a death trap, and their exciting missions become daily nightmares.

Even so, she messages you as often as possible and you are thankful for it. You try sending something back to her but the communications array she rigged up isn’t meant for sending, so you contact Goddard Futuristics but their representative always tells you that they’ll contact you with further information and they never do.

You’re starting to get real pissed at them.

Your friends, coworkers, friends of coworkers, et cetera, all ask you about Renée: How’s space? What’s she doing up there? What does she eat? How do you have sex? (You narrowly avoided punching Todd in the face when he asked that) What does she do for fun? How does she use the bathroom? (“Seriously, Todd, what the hell man?” you sighed exasperatedly when he asked. “Stop asking me weird questions about my wife.”) When is she coming back?

You answer to the best of your ability and try to seem cheerful about it. And then you go home and listen to her voice and wallow in your loneliness.

“How are you holding up?” Elodie asks.

You’re caught off-guard, since all the questions so far have been about Renée, and it takes you a moment to answer. “It’s hard,” you admit. “She’s so far away and I can’t exactly go visit her or have a real conversation or anything, but… But I’m making do.”

She nods and pats his shoulder. “You’ll be fine, man.”

“Thanks,” you say. You wish you could tell that to Renée.

* * *

She talks about life on the ship and her crew a lot (not that there’s much else to talk about) and you start to get the feeling you know these people very well, despite never having met them before in your life.

Eiffel sounds like the kind of guy you could be friends with – a wise-cracking, sarcastic guy who chills more than he works and has an amazing repertoire of pop culture knowledge, and may also be a little in love with the AI. Hilbert, you don’t know that well and neither does Renée, but you can tell there’s a certain mad scientist vibe to him.

Hera, you find the most intriguing. You’ve dealt with an AI before – Alana, in your office – but the way you talk to her is different than the way Renée talks to Hera: she asks her for advice, talks about her as though she’s a living and breathing person. Hell she’s even had arguments with her and has been pranked by her and Eiffel.

It’s different, to say the week.

You go into your office the next morning, sit down at your desk, and clear your throat. “Er, Alana?”

“Yes, sir?” you hear from nowhere in particular.

“What’s a good joke you know?”

There’s a long beat of silence, then: “What did the lawyer say to the other lawyer?”

“What?”

“We’re both lawyers.”

You burst into laughter, shaking your head. “God, where’d you get that one?”

“I found it online,” she replies. “I myself don’t understand the humor but I believed you would appreciate it.”

“Thanks,” you smile. “All right, let’s cut to the chase now – what did you think about our latest issue?”

“Are you asking me, sir?” she asks, and you’re certain you can detect a hint of confusion in her voice. You nod.

She pauses for another moment before explaining in detail the ways she found the new issue to be flawed and various improvements that could be made, and you write it all down.

“All right, thanks for that,” you say. “You make very good points.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says. “If I may ask, why did you ask me what I thought?”

“Because nobody else did,” you say, and you dive into work.

* * *

You return from home after an extended stay in Serbia and find a video message waiting for you. It hits you, then, that it’s actually been a year since Renée left and you didn’t even realize it. Also, you realize you forgot your birthday a couple of days ago.

You leave your unpacking for later and rush to play it. She flickers to live on the screen and you feel tears in your eyes. She’s so beautiful.

The message starts out as though she’s sending this to Goddard at Canaveral and you chuckle when you hear her arguing with Eiffel. And then she gets rid of Hera for three minutes and all of a sudden it’s back to the strange and mysterious – the plant monster, strange weather conditions, Hilbert’s experiments, the shifting station – what kind of crazy place did she get sent to?

You call Goddard again but their lines are all busy, so you send them a strongly worded email and thinks about how much you miss her. You really hope she stays safe.

* * *

You get one short message before Christmas, a little more cheerful than the one before as she details how she’s going to throw the best Christmas party ever, and then there’s nothing.

You don’t worry – she’s probably very busy – but then a week goes by. Then two. And then you start to worry that something terrible might’ve happened with the plant monster.

It’s almost four weeks later when you receive a new message and it’s surprisingly normal. Which is to say, it’s completely abnormal because there’s no mention of strange experiments, noises in the night, plant monsters, or anything of the like.

There is a short paragraph that marks you as odd. She talks about remembering a vacation to Oslo, which is strange because you two have never been to Oslo together. Only you have, one time, when you were doing a story on a hacker who was getting into people’s private email accounts and phones to take their information.

And then it hits you. Someone is reading their messages. You don’t know from which side, but you can only guess that it must be from hers, since there’s no way she could find out if someone’s hacking into his side.

You don’t know who it could be, really – Eiffel, Hilbert, Hera. Or even Goddard.

You don’t bother calling them this time.

* * *

She sends you short, mundane messages and mentions one city or place in each of them.

London. Oklahoma. Vienna. Egypt. Laos. Atlanta. Chicago. Edinburgh.

She doesn’t mention anything in her next message and so you assume she’s sent what she has to say and spell it out.

‘Lovelace’.

You do a meticulous Google search but find very little. There’s not enough to go on, not enough to find anything, and you curse whatever you can for letting this happen.

In the end, it’s by chance you figure it out.

It’s the middle of the night and you’re watching some random documentary, almost asleep, when you hear it: “… disappearance of Captain Isabel Lovelace…”

You sit up, wide awake, and raise the volume. The documentary, you realize, is about the mystery and conspiracy surrounding the recent influx in deep space expeditions. Captain Lovelace and her crew were sent on a reconnaissance expedition to a star in the Leo Constellation and were never heard from since. The mother of one of the crew members tells the interviewer how Goddard could never seem to get her messages passed on to her son, could never get messages from them, and in the end, left the entire station for dead.

“The Hephaestus crew deserved better than to die alone out in space,” she says, and a chill runs down your spine.

You look up the Leo Constellation during the commercial break and sure enough, it includes Wolf 359.

That’s when you receive another message from Renée. This one tells you that she isn’t going to be able to send messages for a while as she helps fix things around the station, and she reminisces about her friends – Alana, Lillian, Ian, Violet, and Ethan.

‘Alive’.

‘Lovelace’. ‘Alive’.

Captain Lovelace is alive.

“Fuck,” you say.

* * *

It takes you ages to track down someone who will speak to you. Most of the families of the other crew members agreed to sign non-disclosure agreements after the disappearance, and Lovelace appears to have no living relatives. But you manage to find the woman from the documentary – Mrs. Eliza Lambert, mother of Communications Officer Sam Lambert aboard the U.S.S Hephaestus.

She doesn’t want to speak with you at first. “I spoke to this documentary crew a while back and all it brought me was ridicule and painful memories,” she tells you over the phone. “It’s time for me to move on from this chapter of my life.”

“Ma’am,” you say. “I understand what you’ve went through. My wife, right now, is on the U.S.S Hephaestus station on another expedition to the Leo Constellation – the same as your son. They’re doing the exact same thing again and they will get away with it again, unless you help me expose these bastards for what they are and make sure they can never send anyone out there to die ever again.”

You don’t think you should’ve pushed her like that, especially with a subject like this, but you think of Renée and you think of what happened to Lovelace’s crew and Lambert’s mother and you can’t bear to let that happen to her.

She doesn’t say anything for a good moment until you hear a heavy sigh. “Fine, I will answer your questions.”

“Thank you,” you say. “Thank you so much.” You ask your questions and she tells you all she knows, faxing over whatever documents you need as you start to develop an idea as to how this story will go.

“Make sure they pay for this,” she says, after you’ve thanked her again.

“I will,” you promise. “I definitely will.”

* * *

You work tirelessly on the story. The Globe tries to send you to cover some political unrest in China but you cash in all your favors and convince them to run this instead.

Your birthday comes and goes with no message from Renée. You wonder how she is, how Doug and Eiffel and Hilbert and Lovelace are. If they’re safe. If they think they’ll be able to come home.

You call Goddard again, and before the operator can even speak, you tell them about your article and ask to speak with a someone for a comment.

The operator puts you on hold and then you’re connected to someone. “Ah, Mr. Koudelka. I’m Mr. Cutter, a representative on behalf of Goddard Industries. Do you mind if I call you – ”

“Koudelka is fine,” you say. “I assume you’ve been told about the content of the story I’m working on?”

“Indeed I have,” Cutter says. “Unfortunately, I am unable to give you a comment on the record at this point in time.”

Well, it was worth a shot, you think. “I see. Well, thank you for your time – ”

“Don’t you want to hear what I have to say _off_ the record?” he asks.

You pause for a moment and put your pencil down. “All right, I’ll bite. What is it?”

“This little exposé of yours is not a good idea,” he says. “For one thing, it won’t be turning very many heads – we have an _excellent_ PR department. For another, your wife is in our hands. What makes you think she’ll be safe if you go through with this?”

Fuck, you think. Why the fuck didn’t you think of this earlier? Holy _fuck_ was this a mistake. You clear your throat and try to play it cool. “You can’t hurt her from here.”

“No, we can’t,” Cutter says, and you can hear the smirk in his voice. “But we can leave her there.” There’s a click and then Renée’s voice, calm and professional, calling out for help.

Your blood runs cold.

Cutter, you think, is still smirking. “Now, we have some people going out there to help her stabilize the Hephaestus and finish her mission, but with a touch of a button, I can have them turn around and leave her out there to die, like Sam did and Isabel should have. And yes,” he adds with a laugh, “we do read your messages. Your wife is smart, granted, but we’re smarter.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

“Now, Mr. Koudelka,” he hums, “are you willing to bargain with your wife’s life?”

You think about the documentary, about your promise to Mrs. Lambert, about Renée’s coded messages and how she must’ve wanted you to do this, to expose Goddard for what they truly are. But this must’ve been before she realized how in trouble she and her crew are in, and you can’t risk their lives and hers for this.

“No,” you say. “I… won’t run the story.” Cutter says something and you hang up on him.

You regret your decision, but there’s nothing you can do to change it.

* * *

You call Mrs. Lambert a couple of days later and tell her what happened. Her response is one of resignation.

“These people are heartless,” she says. “They’ll do whatever they can to get what they want, and they will remove those who try and get in their way.”

“I’m sorry,” you say again.

“I know,” she sighs. “I hope your wife is safe.”

* * *

The Globe sends you to Paris to cover some scandal, and you stop by the café where you first met Renée, so many years ago.

She was beautiful, headstrong with a heart of gold, and you fell in love instantly.

You look up at the sky with a heavy sigh and wonder if Cutter was telling the truth, if he really was sending help or if he was leaving all of them to die.

You wonder if you’ll ever see her again.

You hope you will. That’s all you can do.

Hope.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to talk more about Wolf 359, hit me up on [tumblr](http://www.poeorgana.tumblr.com)


End file.
